Time passes on; and he must soon
          Lie silent on the silent shore;
       Beyond the morning's golden tune——
       Beyond the glory of the moon;
          The old dead Servitor.

        RIGHT THROUGH THE POST.

SOME TIME in the would-be merry month of
May, of this present year, I became a letter—a
highly privileged, registered letter—thanks to
Mr. Page, the Inspector-General of Mails.

I was sent to the post in the hands of a boy—
a boy who had often posted my letters, and who
now posted me. In the regular course of things
I should have gone to the nearest office—a
grocer's shop—where I should have reposed,
for a time, within hearing of the grinding of a
steam coffee-mill, the bumping of sugar-packets
upon the counter, and within the fragrant
influence of the pounded mocha. This was,
however, prevented by another boy, who met my
carrier, just as he was dallying with his charge,
having twice put me into the hole devoted to
the inland and colonial mails, without relinquishing
his hold, and having twice withdrawn me in
playful hesitation.

"Don't go a-chuckin' the letter in there,"
said the other boy.

"Why not?" asked my boy.

"Put 'em in a lamp-post broke short off,"
replied the other boy.

The two set off "up the road" for one of the
pillar letter-boxes. Here much climbing, overing,
and rough inspection of the novel office
took place, and it was full ten minutes before I
was dropped in. I felt as if I was sinking into
the bowels of the earth, and I was much relieved
when I found I had reached the bottom.

My companions were pretty numerous; but
they were nearly all business letters. True, my
pillar-box was in a business neighbourhood, not
far from the chief office; but that was not alone
sufficient to account for this fact. Although
there are nearly twelve hundred of these useful
traps set in different parts of the metropolis, to
catch as many as possible of the five hundred
and twenty-three millions of letters that flew
last year, as thick as locusts, all over the land,
there is a certain class of letters that never go
into anything but a "regular" post-office, and
probably never will. Any lady who could post
a love-letter in one of the pillar-boxes must be
an extremely unconventional, bold, and decided
person, rather difficult to deal with harmoniously
in the married state.

For this, and other reasons, my companions
were full-sized, blue-wove, well-directed
commercial letters; most of them announcing the
approaching appearance of "our Mr. Binks,"
with well-assorted samples, in some expectant
country town, and some of them conveying to
some unsuspecting manufacturer the earliest
intelligence of a heavy bad debt.

After we had rested together very peaceably
for about an hour, the door of our temporary
prison-house was opened by a scarlet postman.
He looked in as a boy looks into a bird-trap
which he has set in a field, or as a climbing
urchin looks into a nest half full of eggs in the
hollow of a tree. We were taken out without
much ceremony or delay, and thrust into a bag;
and in about ten minutes' time we found
ourselves within the great inland sorting-office of
the General Post-office.

Having been duly sorted, I am hurried, along
with a crowd of companions, into a large bag,
which is then sealed with a strong sealing-wax,
and sent sliding down a smooth, shining, steep,
inclined plane, into the daylight, and on to the
platform of the Post-office northern court-yard.
Here we find a number of guards and porters
ready to receive us, in company with many other
bags, and many really dismal, but rather would-
be gay-looking, vehicles, drawn up to convey us
to our different railway stations. These are the
Post-office vans, furnished and horsed by
contract, to the department, for a payment of ten
thousand pounds per annum; and forming the
only existing link that binds the railway-governed
Post-office of to-day, to the mail-coach-governed
Post-office of the past.

In shape, the Post-office van is like a prison-
van; in colour it is a mixture of dingy black
and red; and in condition it is dreadfully
shattered and work-worn. Something of the hearse
also mingles in its composition, and something
of the omnibus. Its stand, when off duty, is at
the end of Bedford-row, Holborn, where it basks
in the sun, within a maze of posts, against the
dead wall, looking with its companions like a
crooked line of Chelsea pensioners waiting for
the doctor. They are occasionally used as night-
houses of refuge by the Arabs of St. Giles's, who
have been known to ride in them asleep, to meet
the morning mails at one of the railway stations.

In one of these vehicles I was stuffed with my
companions, feeling very much (as the man must
have felt who was placed in charge of us) as if
I had been convicted of felony at the Old Bailey,
and was going to a penal servitude of four years.
Our destination was, however, Euston-square,
and we were the first of some seventeen similar
despatches in some seventeen similar vans, that
form an unbroken stream between St. Martin's-
le-Grand and the London and North-Western
Railway terminus, every night from 7 P.M. to
8.30 P.M.

When we arrived, we were received by
responsible Post-office clerks, passed through a
special entrance made for us by the railway
company in the side wall of the station, to save a
few minutes of our valuable time, and deposited
full in the front of our special train.

Our train was nearly all Post-office, and very
little public. Those passengers who went by it
had to pay a high tariff, and book their places
some few days in advance. The train consisted
of seven postal carriages and three passenger
carriages (according to contract), all made up
ready to start from 7 to 8.35 P.M. The passenger
carriages were in front, the mail carriages
behind, and the latter consisted of a sorting
carriage and mail-bag van, or tender, for the